Last week I attended the Social Connections conference in Vienna. This conference is put together by a group of users and IBM partners, and they alternate between North-America and Europe. This was the twelfth conference, but it was my first.

Not only did I attend, I also did a presentation myself. Since I’ve become Mr. IBM Connections plugins over the last two years, I naturally gave a presentation on those. Again.

Vienna is a beautiful city, with a huge legacy of culture, architecture and history. I arrived the day before the conference started and therefore took the opportunity to do some sightseeing. There are those who frown upon those “hop on and off” tour buses that you find all over the world now, but I love them. They are perfect for getting around to see the best sites, and not too expensive.

The conference itself was attended by several IBM-ers, and they started off and ended the conference by talking about the future of collaboration. Over the two days the conference lasted we could learn about:

The way your organization changes because of digital transformation

Administration of IBM Connections (which can be a bitch on-premise)

Various third party apps and solutions for IBM Connections (and that’s growing, something I’m personally very excited about)

Integrated workspaces for employees

How to boost user engagement and make sure your change to collaborative solutions succeed, and how not to do it

The file solution Box which makes it easier to share files from Connections with people outside your organization

Livegrid, which is an even easier way to get your data out of Domino, or make it more easily available for other solutions (and for them to write back to Domino)

IBM Watson Workspace, IBM’s version of Slack where you can add their Watson technology, which will function as a bot that can answer questions. A lot of banks are using similar solutions these days without their customers even knowing about it

Security and hacking. A great lecture was given by my fellow Norwegian Robert Farstad about how they asked professional hackers to hack the IBM Connections solution used by Høyre (the Norwegian political party who currently holds the Prime Minister in Norway)

Phew! Quite a list. But a great conference. If you are interested in learning about any of this stuff, you can find the slides for each session in the agenda. Just click on the More Info button.

I’m interested to see where IBM Connections Pink is going. It seems exciting, but how will customers react to it going from an out-of-the-box-solution to a make-it-into-whatever-you-want-it-to-be solution?

The venue was fantastic. It was like you could hear the ghosts of winter balls past, with the waltz ringing in your ears. Chandeliers, tapestries, long winding staircases, statues, paintings and all other things you think about when you talk about the old Vienna.

IBM made some pretty big announcements tonight. First of all, Notes and Domino will have a version 10 released in 2018. Yeah, I know. I am as shocked as you.

Secondly, IBM is now leaving all the development of the platform to their partner HCL. IBM has already a partnership with them on several other products in their portfolio.

So what does this mean? It means that the platform is not dead, something which we’ve heard since around 2002 from people.

It also means that for the customers, there will be no change in their relationship with IBM. HCL will do the development, and maybe a times help out IBM. But sales, support, PMRs, licensing, Passport advantage will all still be done via IBM.

So the biggest change is that HCL takes over the development. IBM and HCL are committed to make sure that support, development and continuation of the platform will not be disrupted.

The journey starts now, and thus far the next version of Notes, Domino and Sametime is going under the name “Proejct Sapphire.”

Other stuff to look forward to:

Domino will now support the Mail client for Mac as they already do for Outlook via Exchange ActiveSync

There will be constant development for the Domino platform, so that it will be easier to integrate with other platforms and solutions

IBM will hold jams (currently called Domino 2025) for ideas about the future of Notes/Domino where people will have meetings, talks and other ways to give IBM feedback

IBM Champions and the user groups will be invited to be much more involved in the future

The Think conference (taking over for Lotusphere/Connect) will have a much larger presence for Notes/Domino than what we feared

And just to be clear: This covers the entire family of IBM Notes, Domino, Sametime and Verse, both on premise and in the cloud.

Here’s the portfolio that’s a part of the HLC partnership:

IBM Notes and Domino

IBM SmartCloud Notes

IBM Notes Traveler

IBM Mobile Connect

IBM Verse

IBM Mail Support for Microsoft Outlook(IMSMO)

IBM WISPR

IBM Enterprise Integrator (LEI)

IBM Sametime portfolio

IBM Connections Chat/Meetings

IBM Client Access (ICAA)

I was today on the IBM Champions call where we were introduced to this. And some of the questions raised in the Q&A was: Is this too little too late? Will we be able to get customers to invest in Notes/Domino? Will the platform be relevant?

Aren’t there times when you where you are itching to post a scatching status posting about something or someone? But you can’t do it, because you don’t want any persons involved to read your posting.

Luckily Facebook has a function not many people know about that lets you do just that: Post something and then tell what people should not be allowed to read neither the posting itself, or any likes or comments either.

This is how you do it:

Write your posting:

To the left of the Post button you have a pulldown menu:

Click on this button:

Go to Friends except… and click on it. This screen pops up (I have anonymized people in my list, but you will see your friends’ profile photos, names and workplace):

In the top of my list I have the two last persons I blocked from seeing a posting. You can see that they are active, because of the red circle behind their names. If I do want them to see this posting, I simply click on the red icon, so that it becomes white:

Now the person in the top of the list will not be included in this exception list.

To choose a person that should not see this new posting, you simply search for their name in the search field:

Type as many letters as needed in the search field until you see the name of the person listed. Then simply click on the circle to the right of their name:

After clicking on it, it will turn red:

If there are other people you want to hide this posting from, simply search for them as well and click on the circle icon behind their names.

When you have found all the names you simply click on the button Save Changes.

However, it can be a good idea to review the list of people you want to block. To do so, click on the little x to the right inside the search field:

Now you can see the list of all the people you have blocked for this posting:

As you can see I have two people whom I want to block from seeing this posting. The person I removed from the block list is still listed among the others that I’ve chosen, but as we can see the icon behind the name is white, which means he won’t be blocked.

Click Save Changes. You will now return to this screen:

As you can see on the pulldown button, this posting will now be shown to all friends, except the ones you just chose. You can even see the names of people it should be hidden for it you click on the pulldown arrow in the button:

If you change this to Public or Friends, the people you just picked will still see the posting, like everybody else. You choice has to stay on Friends except…

However, the next time you choose Friends except…, all the people you just added to this list will still be listed here. So if you want any of them to see the posting the next time you choose Friends except…, you have to actively remove them from the list.

I’m sure you many times have replied to a comment someone has made on a posting on Facebook. But the well formed and well placed comment that you are so satisfied with suddenly becomes a small nightmare. You are constant bothered by notifications when people comment on the original posting.

Well, I got news for you. Because you have most likely done the same thing. And by that I mean you have probably replied to a comment in the wrong way more than once.

This is how you comment on postings on Facebook.

Here we have a posting on Facebook, with comments:

This is the point where a lot of people get this wrong. If you want to comment on the original posting, you do it like this:

Now everybody who has commented on the original posting will get a notification that I’ve posted a new comment. And that’s how Facebook works.

However, very often people are not replying to the original posting. Instead, they are replying to one of the comments. And that’s where things go wrong.

Do not type your reply as a new comment like this:

What will happen? Well, everybody who has commented on the original posting will now get a notification that someone else has commented. And everybody will be confused about who you are replying to.

Some of you try to remedy that by tagging the person who made the comment you’re replying to. Like this:

Do not do this. Everybody who have commented on the original posting will now get a notification that someone else has commented. And that is not what you are doing. You are replying to one specific comment. In addition, the person you tagged will get two notifications. One telling him that he has been tagged, and another telling him that someone has replied to the original posting.

So how do you reply to a comment, instead of the original posting? Simple. You click Reply under the comment:

Now, type your reply in this comment field instead:

Hit Enter, or the Post button your Facebook app, and your reply will now be directly beneath that comment:

Now, only the person who wrote that particular comment will be notified, and not everybody else who have written comments on the original posting. This is also a way to get a discussion thread going.

If someone now wants to reply to your reply, they click on Reply beneath your reply:

Their reply now will be displayed just beneath yours.

What happens when others make a reply to the original comment? It will be listed under the comment, beneath your reply. And here’s the nice part: Only you and any others who have replied to the comment will be notified about it!

This means that those who made their own comments on the original posting will not be notified. This makes Facebook cleaner and much more enjoyable for everyone. Here’s what a nice discussion should look like on Facebook:

As you can see someone commented on my posting, I then replied to that comment, and then 6 other people replied to that reply. Notice the grey line to the left that tells you that all these replies belong to the original comment. And at the bottom of the picture, you have two new comments. But those are comments to the original posting, which is not a part of the discussion thread belonging to the first comment.